


Take this bet

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-06
Updated: 2010-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Everyone knows this is where the vampires live.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Take this bet

**Author's Note:**

> A prequel to '16 candles' for the [Alternate Lineups challenge](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/855705.html), prompt #65. Three days late, but with the best of intentions. Thanks to [](http://cupiscent.livejournal.com/profile)[**cupiscent**](http://cupiscent.livejournal.com/), as always, for being my eyes, and to [](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/profile)[**romanticalgirl**](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/) for running the challenge and being so patient.

Pete lurks outside the big brownstone house and kicks at pebbles. He shouldn’t and he knows it; it’s not wise to attract attention in this neighborhood, but he’s never had good impulse control. And part of him, maybe, is hoping one of the house’s denizens will come around to see what the noise was about, to sniff the air suspiciously while Pete presses himself tightly against the wall, breathing hard in the shadows.

Everyone knows this is where the vampires live.

There have been enough deaths recently that law enforcement should have this place locked up tight, but they haven’t made a move. Pete doesn’t know why. The deaths have all been called accidents or suicides, nearly always goth-punk kids with scene hair and black jewelry, pale from makeup and blood loss. The nightly news ascribes it to a suicide cult, blaming emo bands and their glorification of the afterlife.

No one really believes that, though. Not with the vampires here.

This is a new group, or a nest, as the goth kids say, in superior tones hushed against supernatural eavesdropping. They’ve only moved in recently – since the first of the deaths, roughly – and the brownstone house is always quiet and still during the day.

Pete’s hung around here twice in the sunlight, watching the windows and skulking around in the nearby alley. This is the first time he’s come at night.

There’s a rustle of movement in one of the nearby bushes, making him jump and jerk back closer to the shadows, heart racing. It’s just a stray cat, though, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, studying him with eerie awareness before it slinks away.

He’s just starting to relax when someone laughs softly, a puff of breath directly into his ear.

He twists around, fists already rising, but he’s human and they’re…not. He hits the wall hard enough to get the breath knocked out of him, and when he focuses his eyes it’s to the sight of a pale white face and sharp teeth.

He tries a brief, necessary round of struggling, but the vampire holds him casually with hands like iron bands and is fast enough by far to block any escape attempts. Sharp white teeth split the vampire’s mouth as it grins, and peppermint-sweet breath blows over his face as the vampire leans forward and says, “There are penalties for trespassing.”

It opens its mouth wide and leans in, and Pete squeezes his eyes closed and tries not to piss himself. He feels something graze his neck, and then someone else interrupts with, “Urie. William says bring him upstairs.”

Pete’s stomach plunges, the sick feeling of relief and the sicker feeling of failure, but he stays on his feet when the vampire releases him. There are two of them and one of him, but it’s still an opportunity, and he doesn’t even think about it before shifting to take a swing, street-fight instincts taking over while the rest of him quails.

He never finishes the motion. The vampire’s eyes settle on him, disarmingly warm and amused, and suddenly Pete feels the fight go out of him like he’s a puppet whose strings have just been cut.

“Inside we go,” the vampire says, sing-song, and Pete follows along behind him like a puppy, up the stairs into the house. He’s aware that this is wrong, nerves still jangling under his skin, but he can’t seem to break out of the blanket of calm wrapped around him, muffling and suffocating.

“Brendon,” the second vampire says, with more annoyance, and a minor argument breaks out behind him. Pete can’t quite seem to focus on it, to figure out what’s going on. It’s like he’s in a dream, and his body isn’t his anymore to control.

Then a new, softer voice says, “Michael.” The others fall silent, and there are a few small whispers of sound before the heavy thump of a door falling shut.

Pete blinks, everything in him and around him suddenly clear again, distinct and sharp around the edges. He’s in a room with no memory of actually walking here, and there’s someone lounging on a desk in front of him. A vampire.

The new vampire smiles, confirming Pete’s guess with a flash of teeth. “You’ll have to forgive Brendon,” it says, with an accent left over from another time and place, smoothly charming. “He’s still young. We’ve been trying to teach him it’s not polite to play with his food.”

Pete takes a step backwards automatically, trying to get a look behind him at how far away the door is. His palms are sweating. There’s a sense of exultation underneath the clamoring alarms of fear and nerves, buoying up to the surface.

The vampire slides off the desk and extends a white-gloved hand. “William Beckett.” It’s dressed like someone from a movie, waistcoat and pocketwatch, a fur draped casually over the red velvet chair nearby. “Welcome.”

Pete stares and makes no move to take that hand, to return the overture. The vampire’s smile doesn’t falter in the slightest, although it does seem cooler; the practiced politeness of a host greeting a guest.

“I presume you came here looking for me. Unless there’s some other reason you’ve been lurking in the bushes outside my house for the past two hours, but I’m afraid I haven’t been able to imagine one.” There’s a warning in the tone, hidden beneath layers of manners and pretenses. Don’t bore me, it says, or I’ll let the other one eat you.

“Your house?” Pete says. His heart’s still beating fast, but it’s all adrenaline now, the thrill of high risk and danger.

“For the time being,” the vampire says. Its clothes are out of fashion, its hair far too long even for Pete’s crowd. Somehow it still manages to be more effortlessly prepossessed than Pete has ever managed to pretend.

“I didn’t know,” Pete says, conversational skills falling flat. His mouth feels too dry for pleasantries.

“You wanted to, though,” the vampire says, smiling a little, just the slightest tug at the corners of his lips. “Didn’t you? And now you do.”

Pete shifts his weight, unable to determine which direction he wants his body to move in, closer or further away. “You’re not going to ask why I’m here?” he asks eventually, chin up. The vampire has a good foot of height on him, but Pete has always had a bigger presence than his physical form.

The vampire laughs, but it’s polite laughter, the humoring pity of the well-bred. “I already know that,” it says. “There’s only one reason humans come looking for us. What you should be asking is if I’m willing to be the one to kill you.”

Pete can almost feel the blood drain from his skull, leaving him light-headed and queasy. “What if I’m not here because of that?” he asks, bluff and bravado. “What if I said I was going to fight you?”

The vampire looks genuinely amused, and not particularly alarmed. “I’d say your chances aren’t very good,” it tells him. “And that you’re lying.”

“You kill people,” Pete says, hands balled into fists. It helps to think of the pictures on the news, to feed the glimmer of anger. Anger doesn’t leave any room for fear.

The vampire makes a bored gesture. “I eat another intelligent species. Humans do the same.”

It’s the disconnectedness in his words and tone that throws Pete off, the absolute uncaring. He stares, at the refined face and the casual posture and the thoroughly recognizable form, and says, “You were one, though.”

The vampire bares its teeth in a mockery of a smile. “You were an egg once, too,” it says. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never had an omelet?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Pete argues.

“Fine,” the vampire allows, waving an unbothered hand. Its eyes flash to match its smile. “You’ve always spit, never swallowed?”

Pete opens his mouth to keep up the fight, but suddenly the vampire is directly in front of him, inches away, head bent so that long hair falls forward to screen them from the rest of the world. Pete finds his face has turned up automatically, his breath coming quick through his mouth.

“It’s not about where we’ve come from,” the vampire tells him, their faces close and secret. “It’s about what we are now.”

Pete inhales – to speak, to spit, to kiss, he’s not sure – and just as fast, the vampire is across the room again, leaning back against the desk with ankles daintily crossed.

“Tell me why you’re really here,” it says, serious, “and I may give you what you want.”

“I’m here for justice,” Pete says. It’s the first thing that comes into his head, wild and unpredicted, with the white faces of the dead scene kids in his mind and the mocking laughter of the vampire downstairs fresh in his memory.

The vampire rolls its eyes, the first sign of impatience. “Don’t lie to me,” it says. It shakes its hair back, baring a throat just as white and perfect as the rest of it, and watches him, knowing and hinting at wicked. It doesn’t move – it can’t, because it’s still leaning against the desk – but it’s suddenly closer, and Pete only belatedly realizes it’s because his feet have taken two traitorous steps forward.

The vampire smiles wider and straightens up, unfolding to its full height. It prowls around him like a cat, circling until it’s out of his line of sight, and Pete holds his ground and doesn’t move because he knows better than to let a predator see him flinch.

“You like the idea of it,” the vampire says, close to his ear. Pete can’t feel the heat of it behind him, but he’s still hyperaware, his body strung tight with tension. “Your blood being slowly leeched away, the dramatic splash of color, red on white. Dying in someone’s arms, tragically young.”

“No,” Pete says. His voice doesn’t come out any louder than a hushed whisper, but he’s sure he can be heard.

“It’s intimate,” the vampire says, voice light. “Teeth breaking your skin, dragging away the seconds of your life. Feeling your heart beat its last to give someone else life.”

“Yes,” Pete whispers. His chest aches from the betrayal of the words.

“Another meaningless violent death,” the vampire murmurs. “And at the hands of a monster. So much more romantic than a handful of pills.”

Pete’s eyes open wide. He twists around, but the vampire is right there, close enough to make him stumble back. He cocks his arm to swing, but there’s a rush of air and suddenly he’s pinned against the desk, the bones in his wrist grinding together in the vampire’s grip enough that his vision flashes white.

“It’s still suicide,” the vampire whispers in his ear. “You don’t walk into the lion’s den expecting to walk back out again.”

Pete kicks out at him, but the vampire just laughs, releasing and evading him. Pete tries punching it twice more, once aiming for the face and once for the gut, and then he finds himself thrown down on top of the heavy oak desk, gasping for breath with the vampire smiling down at him.

“Is it what you really want?” it asks. It’s beautiful, high cheekbones and a soft mouth, grace in its fingers even when they’re pressing into Pete’s skin hard enough to bruise. “Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”

Pete closes his eyes, lets the bottomless empty despair he’s always fighting surge up to swallow him. He feels like he’s drowning in it, and the cool chill of the vampire’s fingers is the only thing keeping him anchored. “Yes,” he says.

Just like that, the pressure is gone, and Pete finds himself alone with the vampire several feet away, studying him. “You say that,” it says, “but you would struggle if I did it. Humans always do. You can’t help yourselves. In the end, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you want oblivion, you will always fight to survive.”

“No,” Pete says. He’s spent years thinking about this, long before there was a convenient nest of vampires around. He’s considered his options and spent night after sleepless night wrestling with himself. This is what he wants. A painless, intimate death. Not another pathetic obituary. Not alone.

The vampire shakes its head. “Go home,” it tells him. “You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”

“No,” Pete says again, louder. It takes everything in him to say out loud, “I want this.”

The vampire tilts its head. “Prove it,” it murmurs.

Pete’s legs feel like they’ll wobble out from under him if he tries to move, but he forces himself to take the few steps between them, pushing into the vampire’s space. He stretches up onto his tiptoes, reddening with embarrassment but determination winning out. The vampire’s mouth is cool against his, yielding when he pushes his tongue past its lips. His hand works at the vampire’s waistband, battling unfamiliar clasps and buckles, trying to find a way to the flesh underneath. He gropes lower and cups his hand around the familiar weight between its legs.

The vampire breaks the kiss, sighing. “Humans,” it says, resigned. “Always fumbling.”

Then there’s a bright, sharp pain Pete hardly registers before he’s falling, his knees buckling at the sudden loss of blood. The vampire doesn’t cradle him against its body so much as brace him upright and crush him against its chest, unbending and pitiless. Pete almost struggles, but he remembers himself and thinks _no, no, this is what you wanted, this is…_

He’s dimly aware of the floor against his back, the vampire kneeling over him with its teeth still sunk deep into his veins. _William_ , he thinks, and then he feels his heart start to stutter and his mind fills with bright, high panic.

William pulls back, studies him as his body spasms and twitches on the floor. He runs a cool fingertip over Pete’s mouth, tracing his lips. “I could still save you,” William tells him, uncharacteristically gentle. “But if you’re so sure this is what you want, I won’t stop you.”

Pete’s vision darkens, gray creeping around the edges. This is the end, he thinks, and he would scream if he could get enough breath. He tries to lash out, to form words, anything. William watches him impassively, watches his life ebb slowly and inevitably onto the hardwood floor.

“I won’t save you,” William repeats, bending his arm and pushing back the white lace cuff of his shirtsleeve. He tears the skin with his teeth and Pete sees blood, his own blood, blossom red and vibrant on William’s skin. He holds his wrist above Pete’s face, inches away from his mouth, and says, “But I will give you the chance to save yourself.”

Pete’s chest hurts. Everything hurts, suffocating and heavy, like he’s being pressed slowly into the ground by a weight too heavy to let him draw breath. He can barely see, William just a pale blur in his vision, the blood on his wrist a bright stain. He’s out of his mind with panic, every fiber in his being straining against the slow lethargy overtaking him, his heartbeat pulsing weaker with every breath.

With his last bit of strength, he lunges up and clamps his mouth over William’s wrist.

He drags deep, swallowing as much as he can, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. William’s voice is low and soothing in his ears, muffled as though coming from far away.

“There,” he murmurs. “Now you’re a monster, too.”


End file.
